Well, I wouldn't call this a pure genius - some SAs are clearly overpriced (Ducal Militia vs Freedom Brigades case, where Ducals get +2 to LD AND AR AND superior rifle for the same cost the Freedom Brigadiers get +2 to LD in some specific situations), some units have "dangerously attractive" prices (basically anything small with MHMG - Necromowers, Vulkans, Great Greys)... A lot of elements seem to be added or altered at a stage, at which the point system has been already finished - Legion powers, Legion and BH fire missions, effects of AV weapons.. The system is complex - that's true, in most cases it produces forces which are more or less balanced
under certain conditions. Pure genius? Nope, definitly not. Complicated? In the case of large guys - yes, for the SZ2 and most of the SZ3 infantry the system is very easy to reverse-engineer, as I've written before - for 48 models on which I tested my estimates for weapon, skill and characteristics cost I had roughly 90% of "hit rate" (error less than 1.5 PC). That's enough for me - I have no desire to create new fuglies or units and worked on the reverse engineering only because I was bored one evening. With enough data EVERYTHING can be reverse engineered, Seamus. Come on, people out there are actually reverse engineering DNA
, reverse engineering of a system which transforms few integers and a set of abilities into a single number is nothing in comparison to that.
There are some problems with the army lists - it seems, that there's a number of units, which were burdened with "not really useful" SAs, which cost a lot of points and do not contribute too much to the combat effectiveness of those units in a typical situation, and some which are "combat optimized" - no SAs, but very well selected statistics and weapons. Some units have been assigned very efficient sets of SAs and combat gear (and stats) - e.g. Praetorian Stalkers, while some have useless skills (e.g. Feast on Carnal Harvester - come on, this guy isn't going to kill anybody in CC with his LMG). The system definitly does not take synergy into account, paradeploying single-wound assault rifle toting guy (pretty much useless at short distances) and multi-wound-armored-like-hell nightmare armed with HMG costs roughly the same (with the cost of the HMG nightmare raised by assigning him Predator Senses).
The point system could use some work, but nevertheless it is one of the best PC systems I've seen. However, if I were designing it, I'd do things the other way round - not base the formulas on playtesting results, but rather develop the PC system, use it to determine unit costs and THEN modify the costs according to the results of playtesting. Just my opinion :-) , but real intelligence beats formulas every time.